Enlarging a Community for Teaching Enhancement and Assessment
Submitted by the CBA Learning Advancement Board
College of Commerce and Business Administration
The College of Commerce and Business Administration
(CBA) completed its first year of the PITA grant establishing the CBA
Teaching Academy. Our desire is to improve teaching within the College
and to create a support network for teaching. The four objectives are:
a) identify and develop effective teaching strategies, b) identify
indicators for a multi-dimensional teaching documentation, c) provide
mechanisms for feedback and monitoring improvement, and d) develop
collaborative relationships (i.e. partners and mentors) for support and
guidance. An eight-member steering committee called the CBA Learning
Advancement Board (LAB) was formed for feedback and guidance.
In Spring 2000, faculty were sent out across campus
to observe classes of exemplary teachers and then to share with each
other "best practices." This initial goal was for faculty to become
comfortable with teaching as a public endeavor and as an ongoing
dialogue. This exercise thus began a series of workshops that focused
on identifying components of effective teaching and learning.
In Fall 2000, five workshops were held to explore
specific issues related to teaching. These workshops were open to the
entire College and ILIR; participants ranged from administrators to
visiting lecturers. The Kick-off workshop was “Ten Levers for Higher
Learning” by Tom Angelo, who also repeated this workshop for other
colleges. The remaining workshops covered the topics of case studies,
early informal feedback, student assessment, and academic integrity.
Presenters of these very interactive workshops were from the College,
the Office of Instructional Resources, and other College Teaching
Academies. The faculty received handouts, references, and textbooks
(e.g., Tools for Teaching; Effective Grading, and
Classroom Assessment Techniques) at these 1.5 hr noon sessions.
There was genuine enthusiasm for this project right
up through the last session and the participant numbers held up well
(average 30 to 40 per session). Faculty conversed with each other about
teaching both in and out of the sessions. For our second year of
funding, CBA will focus more on the assessment and self-reflection phase
now that the faculty are more knowledgeable and confident about
effective teaching. In addition, a college teaching course will be
instituted in early fall 2001.
Implementation
of Instructional Enhancements in Economics: Computational Tools and Data
Visualization in Macroeconomics
Submitted by In-Koo Cho and Anne
Villamil
Department of Economics
We introduced
computer-assisted instruction with MATLAB and web-based course material
in Economics 411: Topics in Macroeconomics. In the learning
environment that we implemented, students were presented with state-of
the-art macroeconomic models. The sophisticated computational techniques
in MATLAB allowed students to ask “what if” questions of their choosing.
That is, in addition to instructor prepared examples illustrating the
solution, students could ask and answer: What would the solution look
like if the problem had a form different than the one chosen by the
instructor? This approach shifted the learning experience from one that
is largely instructor controlled to one that is more student-directed.
This facilitated greater student ownership of the learning process.
With the assistance of the funding
provided through the Provost’s Initiative on Teaching Advancement (PITA)
the Astronomy Department has been able to create a suite of web-based
demonstrations and animations. As a result of our initial
investigation, we were able to go beyond our initial proposal of just
using Java Technology to produce these resources and have developed
applets that incorporate Java Technology, JavaScript/DHTML, and most
recently Macromedia Flash. A web site to serve these resources to the
faculty and students at the University of Illinois, as well as to users
world wide, has been created. The site, dubbed “Demonstrations and
Animations for Teaching Astronomy” (DATA), is now in place and resides
on the Astronomy Department’s servers. The site currently serves ten
interactive demonstrations and animations -- 6 Java applets, 2
JavaScript/DHTML applets, and 2 Flash animations. Some use of DATA in
astronomy courses during the development phase has taken place. Use of
DATA applets in teaching of our introductory astronomy courses will
accelerate considerably in the Spring 2001 semester.
In the summer of 1999, a total revision of
Economics 172 and 173 was begun with funding from a PEW foundation grant
with supplemental funding from a PITA grant awarded in the fall of
1999. Econ 172 and 173 are required courses for all CBA students as
well as economics and finance majors from LAS. The teaching format of
the course was revised from independently taught sections led by
professors or teaching assistants to a lecture-discussion format with
on-line coursework through Mallard. The goals of the revision were two
fold. The first, to improve student learning, dictated moving away from
the number crunching and calculations to focusing on interpretation of
statistical analysis and application to real-world problems. In making
this shift, teaching techniques were altered to allow students to
develop communication and teamwork skills. Also the new format
presented the material in multiple forms to reach various learning
styles. The second was to allow for more efficient delivery of the
material in a time of a shrinking TA pool. A side benefit of this
consolidation was to standardize the content presented to the students.
The PITA grant allowed for construction of quizzes and projects for the
Mallard database as well as the purchase of hard disks to store the
database.
In the spring of 2000, Econ 173 was taught in the
new format. Students expressed dissatisfaction with the new format.
During the summer, further modifications were made to the materials for
Econ 173. The fall 2000 semester saw improved student satisfaction with
the new format in Econ 173. Students were quite pleased with the
applications approach for teaching statistics, and TAs also seemed
satisfied with their teaching experience. In the fall of 2000, part of
the Econ 172 sections were taught under the new format. These sections
also saw positive student reaction to the new format. Spring 2001 will
see the rollout of the new format for all Econ 172 sections. Also the
Mallard material will continue to be refined for both classes.
Our grant for this past calendar year involved
salary for an “Assistant Director for Undergraduate Literature
Instruction,” and I am pleased to report that we have found this
position so useful that we will be continuing the line with assistance
from the College of LAS. After interviewing a number of candidates, we
hired Dr. Rob Kanter, a post-doctoral teaching associate in the
department. His assistance has enabled us to accomplish a number of
things that we could not otherwise have accomplished. In the area of
support for literature instruction, we have:
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Conducted a survey of our graduate assistant and
non-tenure track instructors about the kinds of teaching assistance
they would find most useful.
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Planned a departmental conference on the
department’s literature curriculum, held 21 April 2000, to review
revised course descriptions for our introductory literature courses.
-
Planned a fall Workshop on Introductory
Literature, held 18 August, for our introductory literature staff.
This included sessions on leading literature discussions (employing a
new videotape made with the assistance of OIR), course meetings for
the different introductory literature classes, peer observation of
teaching, detecting and dealing with plagiarism on literature papers,
and various web-based resources, such as Blackboard, for posting
course materials.
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Conducted a series of workshops for introductory
literature instructors on developing creative paper assignments; on
grading literature papers, and on choosing textbooks for our
introductory courses on poetry and fiction.
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Begun development of a web-site of teaching
materials in our introductory literature classes for the use of
instructors.
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Begun development of a handbook of policies and
guidelines for introductory literature instructors.
In the area of student outcome assessment, we have
also conducted a number of undergraduate focus groups and conducted an
alumni survey of our last two graduating classes.
One area that has proven harder to implement on a
voluntary basis than anticipated is a system of peer teaching assessment
and class video-taping for self-assessment. We will be working to
develop this in the spring semester, as well as trying to provide
assistance to our first-time literature instructors by the Assistant
Director and an additional literature advisor.
We appreciate the seed-money provided by the PITA
grant, which has enabled us to test the value and viability of the
position for an Assistant Director for Introductory Literature
Instruction.
Our project aimed to improve
instructional support for college writers whose first language is not
English. One part of the project—the subject of this report—involved
developing resources for instructors who encounter English as a Second
Language (ESL) writers in their Composition I and select Advanced
Composition courses. The other part of the project—summarized in a
separate report submitted by Ron Cowan (DEIL)—entailed development of
tools to be used with international undergraduate and graduate student
in tutorial settings (e.g., the Writers’ Workshop).
As a point of
departure, in Spring 2000 we surveyed instructors in Freshman Rhetoric,
Academic Writing Program, and Business and Technical Writing courses to
learn what they know—and want and need to know—about working with ESL
writers. In Fall 2000, based on the survey results, we developed
instructional resources for our teaching staff and presented them in a
variety of forms and venues. These resources, including a number of
important books on ESL composition, are now part of the library for
Freshman Rhetoric, Academic Writing Program, and Business and Technical
Writing instructors. We will put all of this material to use once again
next fall during scheduled staff orientation and professional
development sessions. The efficacy of this year’s sessions, measured in
terms of improvement of student writing, will be assessed during Spring
2001 as part of an internal review of the Academic Writing Program
underwritten by the Department of English.
With this project we
have made strides toward better serving a vital segment of our
undergraduate population. We have also taken a step toward readying our
instructors, the next generation of the professoriate, for continued
work with college student populations that are growing more culturally
and linguistically diverse with each passing year.
Accommodating Cultural
and Linguistic Diversity in Writing Courses and Writer's Workshop
Consultations
Submitted by Ron Cowan
Division of English as and International Language
The purpose of this project is to develop materials
which will assist teachers in three campus units on campus -- the
Writer's Workshop (WW), the ESL Service Courses and the Intensive
English Institute -- to improve the writing ability of international
students. Current research on writing in a second language and feedback
from campus programs like the WW indicates that international students
make slow progress in overcoming sentence-level errors, many of which
are induced from native language interference. This project has two
goals: (1) to collect and analyze large samples of international
students' writing, and to identify sentence-level errors, and (2), to
use these data to develop instructional materials that writing
consultants and instructors could use in conferences to improve student
drafts and develop their ability to monitor future writing assignments.
The materials are designed to be used in class and in conferences and as
subsequent follow-up practice. They focus students' attention on
sentence-level errors, thereby enabling teachers and WW consultants to
emphasize issues of organization.
The first goal was achieved, but the second was
not, due to several areas that need to be expanded and added in the
computer program. These issues will be resolved at the end of the Summer
Session 2001, due to an extension of funding for the project. The
courseware, which is almost complete, presently focuses on the writing
errors of Korean students at UIUC, but the finished product can be used
to deliver programs targeting writing errors of any international
student population, and because of its capacity to present large
segments of written text for analysis, it can be adapted for teaching
writing to native speakers as well, and hence be used in other units
such as the English Rhetoric Program and the Center for Study of
Writing. In terms of immediate contributions, the project will
significantly improve the writing skills of international graduate
students in many different departments on campus. The teaching
performance of present and future TAs in the three campus programs
mentioned above will be enhanced by the availability of this courseware,
which also offers a unique opportunity for distance education
initiatives in the teaching of writing
In 1999, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
created the LAS Learning Communities with funding assistance from PITA.
In the first year pilot program, slightly less than 300 students were
enrolled in 20 Learning Communities in Fall 1999. Learning Community
students were co-enrolled in two courses each semester, and each
community was assigned an upper-class James Scholar to serve as its
mentor (Learning Leader). These Learning Leaders met weekly with their
Community and also received guidance from two PITA-funded graduate
assistants and Dean Brian Rainer.
Lessons learned from the pilot year include the
need for Learning Communities to be constructed around required,
“main-stream” General Education courses. That first year also directed
us toward several structural adjustments with the scheduling of weekly
Learning Leader meetings. Feedback from Learning Leaders, Learning
Community students, and TAs was all mutually reinforcing: the Learning
Communities proved to be extremely effective in acclimatizing students
to the academic side of their undergraduate experience. Indeed, their
function in socializing those same students, partly because their
meeting place was in the classroom may have been as effective or more so
than the “Living-Learning Communities”.
Because of this success, under the current PITA
grant, the Learning Communities program was expanded in AY 2000-2001 to
slightly less than 900 students who enrolled in a much less diverse
range of freshman courses. The Learning Community weekly meetings were
scheduled as LAS 100 (no credit) sections to permit Timetable
registration of the meetings. We are now awaiting ICES results for
select sections of the first semester Learning Communities to compare
with the first-semester experience last year.
In brief, these two PITA grants have launched a
permanent and expanding freshman learning experience in the form of the
LAS Learning Communities, and they have paved the way for the
introduction of a new generation of Gen Ed delivery to be piloted next
fall. Although these PITA funds have been directed at optimizing the
undergraduate learning environment rather than professorial teaching
techniques, and their attention has shifted from qualitative assessment
to focus-group input to the Learning Communities experience for
undergraduates, their positive impact on making the LAS undergraduate
mission more effective have had few parallels in recent years.
The general purpose of the Speech and Hearing
Science PITA grant project is to enhance the quality of undergraduate
teaching within the Department of Speech and Hearing Science (SPSHS).
Several factors led SPSHS faculty to focus on promoting the highest
quality instruction to undergraduates, particularly freshman and
sophomore students: like other units, SPSHS is seeking greater
centrality on campus and thus, is teaching increasing numbers of
students very early in their UIUC careers. In the past, SPSHS has had
greater emphasis on graduate instruction and thus, faculty expressed a
need for specific knowledge and strategies related to effective
instruction for undergraduate students.
Thus, to meet the need for faculty training and
retooling, we designed a PITA project with two phases. The first phase
involved a series of informal workshops, designed with faculty input and
conducted with faculty participation, to promote incorporation of
effective teaching practices. To date, these workshops have (a)
provided a forum for exchange of information and ideas about teaching
practices that previously had not been available, (b) elicited
interesting and stimulating faculty discussions followed by
implementation of innovative practices, and (c) involved the majority of
the SPSHS faculty. The second phase was suspended to allow for the
formulation of a full college-level teaching advancement initiative.
The Applied Life Studies Teaching Academy will commence in Spring 2001.
The College of Education identified 16 junior
faculty Fellows and 16 senior faculty Mentors to participate in the
2000-2001 Teaching Institute. Fellows were expected to attend a minimum
of 4 out of 7 2-hour seminars on topics related to effective university
teaching and to work with their Mentor, following the POTA model.
Mentors were expected to submit a short report in April describing their
mentoring activities for the year. A project evaluation concluded that
participation in the Teaching Institute was relatively low, but that
those faculty who did participate found the experience to be very
helpful.
A website at
http://albert.math.uiuc.edu/mathrev.htm
now contains many tools to assist beginning calculus students in
learning/relearning the substantial amount of mathematics required of
them. There are lecture notes, with an index. There are detailed,
readable solutions to over a thousand homework, quiz and exam
questions. There are detailed discussions of the most common errors
made by students on many exam and homework questions. There are
hundreds of drill-and-practice exercises on precalculus algebra and
trigonometry, plus early calculus.
Reflective
Teaching Seminar
Submitted by Paul F. Diehl
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teaching
Academy (LASTA) received a grant from the Provost’s Office to initiate a
Reflective Teaching Seminar during the 2000-01 academic year. The
target audience was second year assistant professors through first year
associate professors. Nominations were solicited through direct
mailings to (1) all eligible faculty, (2) all executive officers in LAS,
and (3) senior faculty who served as LASTA mentors. Ultimately,
seventeen participants enrolled in the seminar; fifteen were tenure
track faculty members in LAS, one was a non-tenure track faculty member
in LAS, and one was a tenure track faculty member in the College of
Communications. One participant dropped out of the seminar at the end
of the fall semester for personal reasons. Sharon Scott (OIR) and Paul
Diehl (LAS/Political Science) directed the seminar and led the
participants through a variety of activities and discussions. In
addition, seminar participants attended LASTA luncheons on pedagogical
issues.
An evaluation was conducted for the seminar, and
summary results are available upon request. Overall, the participants
viewed the seminar favorably and stated that they incorporated ideas
learned in the seminar into their teaching. LAS will continue the
seminar next year and has already secured commitments from twelve
faculty members to participate (with several more possible).
The School of Social Work received funding in
2000-01 for three initiatives: 1) Workshop for Adjunct Instructors,
2) Seminar Program, in conjunction with the College of Education,
for all faculty, and 3) Mentoring Program, based on the POTA
model, pairing experienced with less experienced faculty members.
The workshop for adjunct instructor was held just
prior to the beginning of the fall 2000 semester. Twenty-six adjunct
instructors and others participated in sessions on: “Lessons on Good
Teaching from Excellent Teachers,” “Graduate Students as Adult
Learners,” “Active Learning,” “Dealing with Difficult Situations in the
Classroom,” and “Ensuring Equity and Fairness.” Evaluations showed that
the workshop was very well-received, and that participants had been able
to use what they learned in their fall courses. Another, more advanced
workshop will be offered on August 18, 2001. Contact Tonya Manselle
for more information.
The School of Social Work offered faculty seminars
in collaboration with the College of Education. Topics included: “POTA”,
“Active Learning,” “Developing a Teaching Portfolio,” “Using Technology
to Support Teaching,” and “Grading, Expectations and Standards.”
Participation was relatively high. Social Work faculty’s evaluation of
the joint seminar program was mixed. They remain optimistic about the
potential for a seminar program, but would prefer small group discussion
on topics relevant to graduate professional education.
The School initiated a mentoring program based on
the POTA model. Four pairs of fellows-mentors volunteered for the
program, which received very favorable evaluations.
During the summer of 2000, six experienced,
successful Mathematics teaching assistants were recruited to be TA
mentors. Prior to the beginning of Mathematics TA Orientation, the
mentors participated in mentor training, which was developed in
consultation with the Office of Instructional Resources and run by Karen
Mortensen and Paul Weichsel. Mentor training included discussions on
the role of the mentor, characteristics of a good mentor, typical
difficulties of new TAs, peer classroom observation, IEF and ICES
conferences, overviews of upcoming workshops, GTC and AGTC.
Each new TA in the Department of Mathematics was
assigned to a mentor, about six TAs per mentor. During the fall
semester, all new TAs and their mentors participated in four required
departmental workshops on teaching: Active Learning in Mathematics,
Peer Classroom Observation Training, Challenging Classroom Situations,
and Testing in Mathematics. The mentors visited each new TA’s class,
including consultations before and after the visit. New TAs also
collected Informal Early Feedback (IEF) from their classes and met with
a mentor to discuss the results. Towards the end of the semester, new
TAs visited their mentors’ classes. In the spring semester, TAs met
with their mentors to discuss ICES results from the fall, and peer
classroom observation and IEF conferences were again conducted.
Participants in the mentoring program were surveyed
midway through the program. Based on these results and on informal
feedback, the Department of Mathematics will further develop the
mentoring program and continue it in the future. Costs will be
partially covered by a PITA grant in 2001/2002.
Pollutant Transport and Fate in Groundwater: Web-Based Interactive
Simulation and Instruction
Submitted by Albert Valocchi and Charles J. Werth
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
In response to widespread student interest in the
environment and the recognition that groundwater aquifers are highly
susceptible to contamination, the study of groundwater pollution is now
an integral part of the curriculum in the fields of environmental
engineering, earth science, geology, and natural resources.
In the past pollutant transport in groundwater has been taught through
the “standard” instructional paradigms of lectures, textbook
readings, and problem sets, and through more “non-traditional”
techniques such as in-class room experimental demonstrations, web-based
discussion boards, and pollutant transport simulation models. Although
each of these teaching techniques is useful, only simulation models can
illustrate many of the complexities found in “real world” groundwater
problems. Unfortunately, most simulation models are either too
complex for students to solve in a reasonable time period,
or so simple that they illustrate only the most basic concepts. For
this reason, our project focused on the development and testing of
web-based instructional tools for simulating reactive transport problems
in groundwater.
Over the past year we developed a suite of JAVA
applets for simulating the reactive transport of pollutants in
groundwater. The applets have easy to use graphical user interfaces for
parameter input and results visualization. In all, seven applets were
designed and tested, and six existing applets were modified to allow
data input (http://www.cee.uiuc.edu/transport/models.html).
These applets simulate various pollutant transport processes in
groundwater, such as 1) sorption and desorption, 2) 1D advection and
dispersion with single or multi-species decay, and with equilibrium or
rate limited sorption, and 3) 3D advection, dispersion, and decay with
equilibrium sorption. Several of these applets were integrated into the
PIs courses (CEE357, CEE336, CEE457, CEE498RD) through lectures and
homework sets. Next year these applets will be more fully integrated
into the PIs courses, and new applets will be designed that simulate
more complex processes in groundwater.
Assessment of Student Assignments -- The 18 participants in the ACES
Teaching
College
course received instruction on cognitive levels of student assignments.
Instruction included writing course and class objectives that use
cognitive verbs to indicate the desired performance, and then preparing
student assessment tools that measure cognitive performance. This unit
will be included in the Fall 2001
Teaching
College
course, with anticipated enrollment of 23 faculty and graduate students.
Assessment of Teacher Behaviors -- The
Teaching
College
participants also received instruction on teacher behavior based on
cognitive levels of instruction. Classroom instruction was not
videotaped due to a reduced budget for the project. Instruction in this
area will be a part of the Fall 2001
Teaching
College
course.
Intervention -- A three-part seminar was designed and conducted to
assist instructors in identifying the cognitive level of their
instruction and student assessment. The 15 participants in Fall 2000
used the Florida Taxonomy of Cognitive Behavior to assess teaching and
learning strategies. A second three-part seminar with 9 participants
was conducted in Spring 2001, and a third series is scheduled for Spring
2002. In addition, the content and materials developed for the series
has been used in a professional development seminar for 22 U of I
Extension Educators in the West Central Region.
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